happy 26th birthday to Jon!

In my family, celebrating the day you’re born is really more like celebrating the week you’re born :P

Due to busy work schedules, we usually find it hard to arrange an actual birthday dinner and end up celebrating birthdays all through the week. It is actually pretty awesome since you get to have many nice dinner treats and get to have many birthday cakes. It’s even more awesome for Jon and I, since we treat the “birthday week” (maybe it should be birthweek, haha) like a special week for that individual. This means that since last week was Jon’s birthday week, he got to tell me things like “help me go get a glass of water. It’s my birthday week!” And I’ll just have to do it. I can’t wait for my turn in November! *sinister laugh*

Anyway, due to work schedule, we decided that I’ll bring Jon out for a surprise meal on his actual birthday and my family will bring him out for a surprise meal on Sunday. Since Jon really loves spicy food, I decided to bring him to Si Chuan Dou Hua on top of UOB Plaza. It is quite a fine dining restaurant that specializes in Sichuan food. Since they are on the 60th floor of UOB Plaza, the view is great, overlooking the Singapore skyline.

Jon and I had a great time, eating spicy food that we wouldn’t have otherwise ordered when other people are dining with us. We over ordered (of course) and ended up with 4 dishes for the 2 of us – boiled slice fish in chilli oil, chong ching diced chicken with dried chilli, prawns in chilli sauce and stir fried vegetables – 3 out of 4 spicy dishes! We really enjoyed the food in general and the atmosphere was quite pleasant. Anyway, since this is supposed to be a really happy post, I shall not destroy it with ranting about the lack of hospitality we experienced at the restaurant.

On Sunday, my family brought him to Straits Kitchen, a buffet restaurant in Grand Hyatt. I was super excited to go as it had been a while since I’ve gone back there and since I’ve started work, I don’t always eat local food as it can be unhealthy and sometimes opt for other healthier options like salad. Most of us starved ourselves by not eating breakfast :P Going to Straits Kitchen is always fun.

They have a very local atmosphere to the place and I do enjoy buffets quite a bit. Not really because of the amount of dishes you can choose from, but because you can get out of your chair, walk around and explore. Its fun walking around, as you see chefs preparing roti prata, popiah, and many other local dishes. When ordering hainanese chicken rice, or duck, you can also specifically choose which part you like.

We definitely ate to our heart’s content. Judging from the picture below, I think Jon ate a week’s content.